Libya’s war

The rebel hiccup

Internal feuds are hampering the rebels but they are still advancing

THE murder of the Libyan rebels' defence minister, Abdel Fatah Younis, on July 28th was a grave reverse in their campaign to oust Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his regime in Tripoli. The circumstances of the general's murder remain murky, but it was almost certainly an inside job, possibly by an Islamist militia whose members may have harboured a grudge against him; after all, as the colonel's long-serving former minister of interior, General Younis had a lot of blood on his hands. The rebels will be weakened still more if such internal dissension spreads. That in turn is more likely if the military campaign gets bogged down in the scorching sands as the fasting month of Ramadan, which began on August 1st, saps the rebels' will to fight.

But the rebels are still steadily advancing. In the Nafusa Mountains, to the west, they are gaining ground. The town of Tiji, 240km (150 miles) south-west of Tripoli, which Colonel Qaddafi still holds, is under threat. Garyan, a junction only 80km south of Tripoli, is also in the rebels' sights; its capture might even herald the colonel's end. The rebels based in Misrata, now securely in their hands, are fighting for Zliten, on the road west to Tripoli; they claim to have taken it but are unlikely to have fully secured it. On August 3rd rebels were said to have seized a vessel, the Cartegena, which NATO had prevented from delivering oil to the colonel in Tripoli, and were set to sail it to Benghazi.

The only important place where the rebel advance has stalled badly is the oil town of Brega, which General Younis particularly sought to capture; his demise is said to have demoralised rebel troops on that front. Colonel Qaddafi's men have ringed the town with minefields that are proving hard to clear. The general's death has accentuated the rebels' difficulty in co-ordinating campaigns on the three fronts: the western mountains, Brega and Misrata.

The rebels have three other concerns: oil, cash and unity. On the first two, the omens are good. If Brega were taken, a vital route for exporting oil would open up. The damaged pipeline running north from Sarir and Mislah has been repaired, though engineers overseeing it want better defences against possible attacks by the colonel's forces across the desert. Meanwhile, the colonel's own oil supply is dwindling.

On the cash front, the recognition of the rebels' Transitional National Council (TNC) as Libya's legitimate government by the United States on July 15th and Britain on July 27th should enable frozen funds worth more than $200m to be released, once legal obstacles are overcome. Meanwhile, the TNC is several months behind in paying salaries, but is making token handouts to mollify people during Ramadan. Promises of handsome cash donations by Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have yet to be fully met.

As NATO continues to pulverise the colonel's forces, the rebels are benefiting from French and Qatari arms supplies. But they still need a clearer military structure. The first months of the insurrection saw a struggle for control between General Younis and Khalifa Hiftar, a longtime exile and former general for Colonel Qaddafi who had returned from the United States. Then Omar Hariri was named minister of military affairs, with General Younis, widely distrusted because of his record under Colonel Qaddafi, apparently in command at the front. More recently Mr Hariri was replaced by Jalal al-Dogheily. Moreover, a score or so of militias have emerged in and around Benghazi, the rebel headquarters, apparently beyond the control of the TNC, some of them said to be Islamist. The council must get a grip on them fast. If it can do so, its prospects will still be good.